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January. 1942
F I L M I N D I A
Auzurie und Hari Shivdasani appear in "Nai Duniya" a Circo picture directed by A. R. Kardar.
Add to this the very serious problem of overseas transport and imagine the plight of our .ndustry which entirely depends on foreign countries for all its vital supplies.
We understand that the principal suppliers >f raw films in India have stocks on hand to last ill the end of April 1942. Optimists, though hese people are, they cannot forecast the future. ?hey hope to maintain supplies to about a hunIred. small and big. producers in the country. Ve do not think that they will be able to do so jecause of the shortage of transport vessels. Ul the ships, big and small, which the Allies iave today are required for the transport of •ital necessities. And raw film is not such a •ital necessity in times of emergency. It is herefore necessary to conserve the present raw . tock on hand and make it last as long as is posible in case of sensitized goods.
* Someone started shouting about the shortage f soda sulphide the other day. Prices of this hemical have jumped 400%. And it is an absoltely necessary item in developing films. The ame story repeats in other chemicals.
n Apart from this, the producers are paying Jkore a id ever more in every item of picture
production: wood, paint, cloth, machinery, replacements, make-up, screws, nails, labour and numerous other things that are required everyday for a film studio.
Add to all this the stupidly inflated salaries of stars and directors— some of whom hardly deserve one tenth of what they are getting now.
Yes, the lot of the producers is not so very happy just at present and yet over thirty new producers have cropped up to do free-lance production and we often find them running about the town shouting for supplies.
Still another tragedy of the present day production is that even after producing a good picture it is difficult to find it a suitable theatre for its release. A picture has to lie unreleaseu for months. Several pictures produced in 1939. have not yet been released in Bombay, the most important key city for picture releases.
It is notorious that Indian films have long runs at almost every theatre. Bombay has about a dozen first run theatres for premiere releases. These theatres take an average of four pictures per theatre per year. That accounts for 48 pictures a year. What is to happen to the 50 and odd other pictures produced every year?
This problem can be solved either by building new theatres — highly improbable in these
This is how Harish urooes Husna Banu in "Nai Roshni", a National picture.
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